Body Language of Hair Play
Cue: Hair Play
Synonym(s): Playing With The Hair, Twirling The Hair, Hair Tossing, Hair Flick, Sucking On The Hair, Combing The Hair, Brushing The Hair,,Sexual Hair Play, Running Fingers Through The Hair, Wrapping The Hair Around The Neck, Flicking The Hair, Hair Twirl, Hair Sucking.
Description: When hair is playing with, tossed, twirled, flicked, combed, or sucked.
In One Sentence: Playing with the hair is a sign of self grooming, pacifying, or is a way to draw attention to feminine features in a dating context.
How To Use it: Women can play with their hair in order to draw men’s attention to it. When hair is tossed and otherwise displaced, it will draw men’s eyes. Tossing, flicking, and brushing the hair are ways to display youthful qualities of fertility which is mostly unique to women.
Sucking on the hair or stroking the hair is also a way to help sooth nerves although it is not advisable to do so repetitively as it can be read by others as insecurity.
Context: a) Dating, b) General.
Verbal Translation: “I’m drawing attention to my hair by grooming it so that I can show off its luxuriousness and get it ready for other people’s eyes to feast upon its greatness.” “I’m concerned my hair is out of place so I’m fixing it so others don’t think I’m unkempt.” “I’m sucking on my hair to pacify myself as a replacement for a soother.”
Variant: See Head Toss.
Cue In Action: a) When she saw a cute boy she subconsciously twirled her hair around her finger, titled her head to the side and batted her eyes at him. b) During a boring lecture she passed the end of her long blonde hair through her lips to pacify herself. b) His hair was overgrown and it constantly fell into his eyes so he either flicked it away or brush it away with the side of his hand.
Meaning and/or Motivation: a) Hair tossing is done by women to show off their luxurious hair to men. Hair tosses can be done by flicking the hair over the shoulder or away from the face. Hair can be removed from a band and twirled or rolled and placed on top of the head to expose the neck.
Other hair signals include running the fingers through the hair to preen it, wrapping the hair around the neck or curling it around the finger. These types of signals are done by women usually out of their conscious awareness. They may be available and seeking sexual attention, but equally, they can be done to serve an actual function. When they are done to attract attention, they are driven by inner thoughts and desires which manifest as nonverbal cues. It is the desires that prime the motivation to act out sexually. In this case, grooming draws attention to her luscious hair and hence her youth and fertility.
Men will also preen in during courtship and might try to flatten their hair, stroke it, or brush it away from the eyes. In more overt cases, men might remove a comb and fix their hair entirely.
b) Outside of a dating context, the hair might be preened due to either a functional purpose such as when it blocks the vision, or as a means of pacifying. Sucking on the end of the hair is a replacement for a soother as it stimulates the sensitive lips. Running the fingers through the hair can also serve a pacifying purpose as it reminds us of having our hands entwined in someone else’s. Other times the hair is fussed with simply to preen and keep the hair in its place.
Cue Cluster: a) Added sexuality can come with a lip lick or moistening of the lips with lip gloss or adding lip stick to make them appear red and seductive. Having the lips slightly parted as if blowing a small stream of air through them can escalate the cues even more dramatically.
For hair play to be a sexual cue, it will be done in association with eye contact, absent of which might just be a form of soothing auto contact. Eye contact turns a fairly random gesture like touching the hair into one that is directional, meaning the eye contact sends a message to a person of interest.
Other times, women use signals to “fish and lure” where signals happen in a more broad-stroke fashion, absent of eye contact and direction, sent off into the room at large.
When men preen they will often do so secretly and will not use eye contact to draw attention to themselves. In other words, men will preen before an approach rather than during one as women tend to do.
Body Language Category: Adaptors, Amplifier, Auto contact or self touching, Boredom, Courtship display, Stroking body language, Indicators of sexual interest (IOsI), Pacifying, Preening, Worry body language.
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